News Item: : 21 Again!
(Category: Torch of The Faith News)
Posted by admin
Wednesday 16 April 2014 - 16:44:05
Alan in the centre of his family after his reception into the Catholic Church - April 1993.
It is 21 years this week since I was received into the Catholic Church and since my 21st birthday. At 42, I have been a Catholic for half of my life.
Amongst the myriad things which grace worked with to move me to conversion, four stand out as foundational.
1. The Church is One, True, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic.
As a Protestant, who already believed in and loved Jesus Christ as the Son of God, I came to see that the Church He founded had to have a visible lineage that could be traced back through history to Him. That is logical.
I also realized that, if this Church were founded by Him for the salvation of souls, and that He had promised to remain with it, and that the gates of Hell would not prevail against it, then it had to be One, True, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic in its very essence.
I had also glimpsed the mystery of holiness in Her Liturgy and in a small group of elderly faithful who gathered at the church each week for Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, Novena to Our Lady, and Stations of the Cross.
Universality of belief was especially attractive after years in Protestant communities where each person had their own system of belief and practice.
2. Sacred Scripture, Tradition and Magisterium.
If the True Church is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, then it follows as a logical premise that the world of Christian Faith is wider than Scripture alone.
The Catholic Church existed before the writing of the New Testament. The Catholic Church was the context for the writing of the New Testament. And, the Catholic Church decided what constituted the canon of the New Testament.
It makes sense that the Sacred Scripture is a central aspect of Sacred Tradition, and that both need authoritative interpretation - an authority bestowed by Christ and assured by the Holy Spirit. Hence, the Magisterium.
In his book, The Catholic Church and Conversion, GK Chesterton reminds us that 'we do not only want a religion that is right where I am right, but that is right where I am wrong.' The Magisterium is a great blessing in that it transcends our limited, sinful and culture-bound understanding. What a blessing this is in an ever-changing world.
3. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and Real Presence.
It is a wonder that Protestants with a literal interpretation of the Bible, find themselves unable to receive the literal sense of Jesus' words: 'This is My Body... This is My Blood'... and the majestic sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel.
Attending Holy Mass as an observer for a couple of years prior to my conversion must have allowed graces to penetrate and saturate my being. In those days, I remember all the Masses I experienced as being very prayerful and reverent. I gradually went from refusing to genuflect/make the sign the cross to being physically and emotionally unable to do otherwise.
I know that on the night of Dad's reception into the Church, one year before Mum's and several years prior to mine, that I had looked at the Tabernacle and prayed simply: 'Lord, I've been taught that You were not there. If You are, please help me to accept it.'
As time went on, I was given a deep love for the Real Presence of Jesus Christ - Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity - in the Blessed Sacrament. Thanks be to God.
Canon Michael welcomes me into the Holy Catholic Church - Deo Gratias!
The late Canon Michael Culhane, who received Dad, Mum and I into the Church between 1989 and 1993, regularly preached on the Mass as the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass which makes present the One Sacrifice of Calvary. Once one accepts the authority of Christ's Church, then one is opened up to all Her mysteries. Having discovered the living source and summit of the Christian life, there really was nowhere else to go. Each town in the world can become like home when Jesus dwells in the Tabernacle.
As many years have progressed, these initial realizations have percolated so deeply into my personality - informing and forming it - that they are now almost unconsciously accepted and responded to.
4. The Maternal Protection of Our Lady.
Again, as the acceptance of Sacred Scripture and Tradition entered more deeply into my reasoning, I came to see how simple and wonderful was Christ's giving of His Mother to His Beloved disciple from the Cross. The words 'Behold your mother' suddenly had a new resonance. Our Lady truly is the surest and swiftest way to Jesus. The Rosary is a thoroughly Gospel-based prayer which can immerse us through Mary into Christ.
Here in April 2014, by God's grace, my initial Christocentric awareness has been broadened into the Trinitarian dimensions of our Faith. The mystery of the Blessed Trinity embraces and runs through every aspect of our Holy religion. To draw just one example from the above points, the Church is One because of Her founder Who established Her to reconcile all men by the power of the Cross, but She is also One because the Blessed Trinity is Her source and origin. The Holy Spirit also dwells in Her and sustains Her unity.
Events in recent years have broadened my understanding of Tradition. I think I used to focus more on this being to do with the dogmas and doctrines in a cerebral way. It is that, but I now also grasp more fully the inclusion of Sacred Liturgical Tradition and customs expressing the Deposit of Faith.
Indeed, studying the rich history of our culture has opened my eyes to the fact that the Catholic Church truly built Western Civilization.
I better appreciate the wonder of Christendom and the heights reached because of Christ's Church, and the model of the Christian family, in the fields of art, architecture, law, literature, music, science, social welfare, and an authentically human rights tradition.
I now grasp the fact that the Holy Mass was the very centre of this world, bringing unity to God and Man, the natural and the supernatural, the body and the soul, the heart and the mind, the individual and society, local society and the wider continent, work and leisure, the seasons and the liturgical calendar, health and sickness, the living and the dead.
The unities of this Eucharistic world were only sundered by much self-focus, violence and prolonged persecution. The tragic result of these tribulations, and the trajectory of events that they accelerated, means that today most people live and die without any awareness of their cultural and spiritual patrimony. They pass through life unaware of where they came from or where they go to. And come and go we all do. This is what the New Evangelization seeks to address.
The events of the 20th Century and these first decades of the 21st Century continue to affirm the truths of the Catholic Church. They give us a tangible demonstration of what man descends to - in all the fields highlighted above - without God and the unity of His Church.
I can see in my own life how the Church, as Christ's Mystical Body, has made me more fully human. This has been a fruit of the power of Her sacraments, teaching, prayer and moral community life.
When I slip away from these things, I really do become less fully myself. Sin is a negation of who I am and is more about me falling into who I am not. But with Christ's love, I become more truly who I am. It is the same for all Catholics who partake of Christ's divine life.
It must be said that the Church, at many levels, is presenting a less clear vision today of internal unity and truth than 21 years ago. This tragedy is occuring in part because the four pillars of the Faith, described in Acts 2:42, are being more and more ignored by people who dissent and seek easy compromise with the world.
Yet this too affirms the Absolute Truth of Catholic orthodoxy; the Truth is made more visible when presented and lived faithfully, and is obscured when the members of the Church prefer their own limited and sinful self-will. This obscuration is not the reality and when the reality is encountered again, it shows the obscuration for what it is. Grace works mysteriously to point each and all of us back to the fullness of Truth.
In a mysterious way, this helps us to see that the Truth is deeper than us. The Catholic religion is revealed to us, not created by us. We can even see what it is by comparing it to what it is not.
For example, the reverence of Liturgy, the purity of doctrine, the faithfulness to morality and shared Christian community, and the depth of truly Christian prayer, help Christ to shine through our parishes.
When these truths are ignored, we see a new church emerging, which is but a reflection of limited and sinful humanity. This will not be enough to nourish searching souls and already many souls are seeing beyond watered-down religion and seeking full beauty, goodness and truth. People are beginning to see beyond the lowly people's altars to the soaring beauty of the High-Altars; to see beyond the dissenting theologians to the lives of the saints; to awake from praying with clay to recovering praying with blessed beads; to grow out of 'Colours of Day' and into Canto Gregoriano; to prefer the Christ to the self.
The only thing that can sustain us is the religion God gave to us. My prayer is that all who read this will come to know and love Jesus Christ and to join the Church He founded and maintains for their salvation and sanctification.
Dear readers, I am 42 this week - or 21 again if you like! Please join me in thanking God for the grace of the Catholic Faith - this Pearl of Great Price. Let us pray for each other to cooperate with God's grace and grow in holiness and to thus persevere to and beyond the End.
Instaurare Omnia in Christo!
God bless - Alan.
This news item is from Torch of The Faith
( http://www.torchofthefaith.com/news.php?extend.630 )
(Category: Torch of The Faith News)
Posted by admin
Wednesday 16 April 2014 - 16:44:05
Alan in the centre of his family after his reception into the Catholic Church - April 1993.
It is 21 years this week since I was received into the Catholic Church and since my 21st birthday. At 42, I have been a Catholic for half of my life.
Amongst the myriad things which grace worked with to move me to conversion, four stand out as foundational.
1. The Church is One, True, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic.
As a Protestant, who already believed in and loved Jesus Christ as the Son of God, I came to see that the Church He founded had to have a visible lineage that could be traced back through history to Him. That is logical.
I also realized that, if this Church were founded by Him for the salvation of souls, and that He had promised to remain with it, and that the gates of Hell would not prevail against it, then it had to be One, True, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic in its very essence.
I had also glimpsed the mystery of holiness in Her Liturgy and in a small group of elderly faithful who gathered at the church each week for Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, Novena to Our Lady, and Stations of the Cross.
Universality of belief was especially attractive after years in Protestant communities where each person had their own system of belief and practice.
2. Sacred Scripture, Tradition and Magisterium.
If the True Church is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, then it follows as a logical premise that the world of Christian Faith is wider than Scripture alone.
The Catholic Church existed before the writing of the New Testament. The Catholic Church was the context for the writing of the New Testament. And, the Catholic Church decided what constituted the canon of the New Testament.
It makes sense that the Sacred Scripture is a central aspect of Sacred Tradition, and that both need authoritative interpretation - an authority bestowed by Christ and assured by the Holy Spirit. Hence, the Magisterium.
In his book, The Catholic Church and Conversion, GK Chesterton reminds us that 'we do not only want a religion that is right where I am right, but that is right where I am wrong.' The Magisterium is a great blessing in that it transcends our limited, sinful and culture-bound understanding. What a blessing this is in an ever-changing world.
3. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and Real Presence.
It is a wonder that Protestants with a literal interpretation of the Bible, find themselves unable to receive the literal sense of Jesus' words: 'This is My Body... This is My Blood'... and the majestic sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel.
Attending Holy Mass as an observer for a couple of years prior to my conversion must have allowed graces to penetrate and saturate my being. In those days, I remember all the Masses I experienced as being very prayerful and reverent. I gradually went from refusing to genuflect/make the sign the cross to being physically and emotionally unable to do otherwise.
I know that on the night of Dad's reception into the Church, one year before Mum's and several years prior to mine, that I had looked at the Tabernacle and prayed simply: 'Lord, I've been taught that You were not there. If You are, please help me to accept it.'
As time went on, I was given a deep love for the Real Presence of Jesus Christ - Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity - in the Blessed Sacrament. Thanks be to God.
Canon Michael welcomes me into the Holy Catholic Church - Deo Gratias!
The late Canon Michael Culhane, who received Dad, Mum and I into the Church between 1989 and 1993, regularly preached on the Mass as the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass which makes present the One Sacrifice of Calvary. Once one accepts the authority of Christ's Church, then one is opened up to all Her mysteries. Having discovered the living source and summit of the Christian life, there really was nowhere else to go. Each town in the world can become like home when Jesus dwells in the Tabernacle.
As many years have progressed, these initial realizations have percolated so deeply into my personality - informing and forming it - that they are now almost unconsciously accepted and responded to.
4. The Maternal Protection of Our Lady.
Again, as the acceptance of Sacred Scripture and Tradition entered more deeply into my reasoning, I came to see how simple and wonderful was Christ's giving of His Mother to His Beloved disciple from the Cross. The words 'Behold your mother' suddenly had a new resonance. Our Lady truly is the surest and swiftest way to Jesus. The Rosary is a thoroughly Gospel-based prayer which can immerse us through Mary into Christ.
Here in April 2014, by God's grace, my initial Christocentric awareness has been broadened into the Trinitarian dimensions of our Faith. The mystery of the Blessed Trinity embraces and runs through every aspect of our Holy religion. To draw just one example from the above points, the Church is One because of Her founder Who established Her to reconcile all men by the power of the Cross, but She is also One because the Blessed Trinity is Her source and origin. The Holy Spirit also dwells in Her and sustains Her unity.
Events in recent years have broadened my understanding of Tradition. I think I used to focus more on this being to do with the dogmas and doctrines in a cerebral way. It is that, but I now also grasp more fully the inclusion of Sacred Liturgical Tradition and customs expressing the Deposit of Faith.
Indeed, studying the rich history of our culture has opened my eyes to the fact that the Catholic Church truly built Western Civilization.
I better appreciate the wonder of Christendom and the heights reached because of Christ's Church, and the model of the Christian family, in the fields of art, architecture, law, literature, music, science, social welfare, and an authentically human rights tradition.
I now grasp the fact that the Holy Mass was the very centre of this world, bringing unity to God and Man, the natural and the supernatural, the body and the soul, the heart and the mind, the individual and society, local society and the wider continent, work and leisure, the seasons and the liturgical calendar, health and sickness, the living and the dead.
The unities of this Eucharistic world were only sundered by much self-focus, violence and prolonged persecution. The tragic result of these tribulations, and the trajectory of events that they accelerated, means that today most people live and die without any awareness of their cultural and spiritual patrimony. They pass through life unaware of where they came from or where they go to. And come and go we all do. This is what the New Evangelization seeks to address.
The events of the 20th Century and these first decades of the 21st Century continue to affirm the truths of the Catholic Church. They give us a tangible demonstration of what man descends to - in all the fields highlighted above - without God and the unity of His Church.
I can see in my own life how the Church, as Christ's Mystical Body, has made me more fully human. This has been a fruit of the power of Her sacraments, teaching, prayer and moral community life.
When I slip away from these things, I really do become less fully myself. Sin is a negation of who I am and is more about me falling into who I am not. But with Christ's love, I become more truly who I am. It is the same for all Catholics who partake of Christ's divine life.
It must be said that the Church, at many levels, is presenting a less clear vision today of internal unity and truth than 21 years ago. This tragedy is occuring in part because the four pillars of the Faith, described in Acts 2:42, are being more and more ignored by people who dissent and seek easy compromise with the world.
Yet this too affirms the Absolute Truth of Catholic orthodoxy; the Truth is made more visible when presented and lived faithfully, and is obscured when the members of the Church prefer their own limited and sinful self-will. This obscuration is not the reality and when the reality is encountered again, it shows the obscuration for what it is. Grace works mysteriously to point each and all of us back to the fullness of Truth.
In a mysterious way, this helps us to see that the Truth is deeper than us. The Catholic religion is revealed to us, not created by us. We can even see what it is by comparing it to what it is not.
For example, the reverence of Liturgy, the purity of doctrine, the faithfulness to morality and shared Christian community, and the depth of truly Christian prayer, help Christ to shine through our parishes.
When these truths are ignored, we see a new church emerging, which is but a reflection of limited and sinful humanity. This will not be enough to nourish searching souls and already many souls are seeing beyond watered-down religion and seeking full beauty, goodness and truth. People are beginning to see beyond the lowly people's altars to the soaring beauty of the High-Altars; to see beyond the dissenting theologians to the lives of the saints; to awake from praying with clay to recovering praying with blessed beads; to grow out of 'Colours of Day' and into Canto Gregoriano; to prefer the Christ to the self.
The only thing that can sustain us is the religion God gave to us. My prayer is that all who read this will come to know and love Jesus Christ and to join the Church He founded and maintains for their salvation and sanctification.
Dear readers, I am 42 this week - or 21 again if you like! Please join me in thanking God for the grace of the Catholic Faith - this Pearl of Great Price. Let us pray for each other to cooperate with God's grace and grow in holiness and to thus persevere to and beyond the End.
Instaurare Omnia in Christo!
God bless - Alan.
This news item is from Torch of The Faith
( http://www.torchofthefaith.com/news.php?extend.630 )